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Abandoned mines › Maine
Abandoned mine inventory

Abandoned mines in Franklin County, Maine

Franklin County, Maine has 162 mine and prospect features on USGS topographic maps published 1956–1990. MSHA's register carries 19 mines in the county with status Abandoned or Abandoned and Sealed.

Every mine and prospect feature the USGS digitized from historical topographic maps covering Franklin County, every OSMRE abandoned mine land problem in the county, and every MSHA-registered mine here with status Abandoned. Named features are listed below; unnamed ones are counted by type. Locations are deliberately not shown: this page says what abandoned workings are in the county, not where to find them. They are dangerous and should not be entered.

Mapped mine features (USGS)
162
Mine openings
0
OSMRE problems unreclaimed
0
MSHA mines marked abandoned
19
0 features carry a name0 prospect pits37 quadrangle maps, published 1956–1990 0 MSHA mines abandoned and sealed
What the features are
  1. Mines and surface workings
    labelled mines, open pits, strip mines, placer and hydraulic workings
    26 16.0%
  2. Quarries, gravel and borrow pits
    construction-material and industrial-mineral extraction
    136 84.0%
MSHA-registered mines with status Abandoned19 on register
  1. Bass Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Maine Department Of Transportation · MSHA ID 1700501
    Abandoned
  2. C637-Dover-Foxcroft
    Surface metal/non-metal · Pike Industries Inc · MSHA ID 1700603
    Abandoned
  3. Crusher C608 (Portable)
    Surface metal/non-metal · Pike Industries Inc · MSHA ID 1700583
    Abandoned
  4. East Jay Pit And Plant
    Surface metal/non-metal · Town Of Jay-Me · MSHA ID 1700346
    Abandoned
  5. Farmington Plant
    Surface metal/non-metal · Dragon Products Company · MSHA ID 1700296
    Abandoned
  6. Finlay Screen
    Surface metal/non-metal · E.L. Vining & Son, Inc. · MSHA ID 1700900
    Abandoned
  7. Hastings Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Dan Goucher Construction · MSHA ID 1701002
    Abandoned
  8. Holstein Ridge Gravel
    Surface metal/non-metal · DeWildt Excavating LLC · MSHA ID 1700796
    Abandoned
  9. Huber Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Flagstaff Construction · MSHA ID 1700756
    Abandoned
  10. Madrid Gravel Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Mark Beauregard Inc. · MSHA ID 1700963
    Abandoned
  11. Newry Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Pike Industries Inc · MSHA ID 1700839
    Abandoned
  12. NORTH JAY QUARRY
    Surface metal/non-metal · J.C. STONE INC. · MSHA ID 1700851
    Abandoned
  13. North Jay Sand And Gravel
    Surface metal/non-metal · Blue Rock Industries · MSHA ID 1700288
    Abandoned
  14. Pioneer Crusher
    Surface metal/non-metal · E.L. VINING & SON INC. · MSHA ID 1700763
    Abandoned
  15. Powerscreen #212
    Surface metal/non-metal · E.L. Vining & Son, Inc · MSHA ID 1700936
    Abandoned
  16. QUICK STREAM GRAVEL
    Surface metal/non-metal · Quick Stream Gravel · MSHA ID 1700639
    Abandoned
  17. Smith Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · Meader's Construction · MSHA ID 1701008
    Abandoned
  18. Western Region
    Surface metal/non-metal · Maine Department Of Transportation · MSHA ID 1700531
    Abandoned
  19. Wing Hill Mine
    Surface metal/non-metal · Blue Rock Industries · MSHA ID 1700456
    Abandoned

Status and date are as reported to MSHA by the operator. Each mine's own page carries its accident, citation and inspection record.

By source vocabularythe publishers' own terms
Feature type Features
Gravel Pit 79
Gravel Pit 34
Open Pit Mine or Quarry 26
Quarry 18
Sand and Gravel Pit 2
Sand and Gravel Pit 2
Gravel/Borrow Pit - Undifferentiated 1
Other counties in MaineAll counties →
How to read these numbers

A USGS feature is a symbol on a historical topographic map, there when the map was surveyed; it may since have been sealed, reclaimed, built over or reopened as a working mine, and the map does not say which. An OSMRE row is a problem the abandoned mine land program tracks, not a mine. An MSHA mine is a registered operation whose operator reported abandonment, a record that starts in the 1970s. The three overlap and are never added together. The county is assigned from each feature's coordinates against the Census 2023 county boundaries. The full method is on the national page.

Sources
  1. USGS, Consolidated Prospect- and Mine-Related Features from 7.5- and 15-Minute Topographic Quadrangle Maps of the United States (USMIN)
    597,612 point and area features digitized from about 106,350 historical topographic maps published 1886–2006; public domain (CC0). A feature is a map symbol, not a field-verified site, and the map does not say whether it was still worked.
  2. USGS Fact Sheet 2025–3003, The Abandoned Mine Inventory of the United States
    States that as of 2025 there is no comprehensive national inventory of abandoned mine features, and that the detailed national database now being built will not be published.
  3. OSMRE, Abandoned Mine Land Inventory System (e-AMLIS), public Problems layer
    One row per abandoned mine land problem in a problem area, with its type, funding program and reclamation status; mostly coal mined before the 1977 Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act. Coordinates are the problem area's.
  4. MSHA, Mines dataset (Mine Data Retrieval System)
    Every mine registered with MSHA since the 1970s; a mine reads Abandoned or Abandoned and Sealed when its operator reported that status. Refreshed weekly.
  5. US Census Bureau, 2023 cartographic county boundaries (1:500,000)
    Each feature's county is assigned by its coordinates against these boundaries, not copied from the source file.
  6. GAO-20-238, Abandoned Hardrock Mines (March 2020)
    Federal agencies had identified at least 140,000 abandoned hardrock mine features on federal land and estimated more than 390,000 more not yet captured in their databases.
  7. Abandoned Hardrock Mine Reclamation (AHMR) Program, US Department of the Interior
    The program the USGS inventory is compiled for. Its appropriations and the 674,000 field-confirmed feature count on this page were provided by the program manager, Office of Environmental Policy and Compliance, and are cited with permission (2026-09-08).
  8. IMCC-NAAMLP Hardrock AML Report
    Page 48 carries the two figures this page leans on: USGS estimates 633,181 of the 725,690 mine features it recorded from historic topographic maps, 87 percent, are hardrock; and state and federal agencies have submitted more than 724,000 AML features to the national database being built, already more than the historic maps hold. Year-by-year AHMR funding is on page 35.